


and this is the sun's birthday

by millepertuis



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Hoth, Huddling For Warmth, Pre-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 05:57:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13606995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: Luke, Han, and Leia on Hoth.





	and this is the sun's birthday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thebigbengal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebigbengal/gifts).



> title from ee cummings' poem _i thank You God for most this amazing_

 

 

Luke slips out of bed and puts on another two pairs of socks on his feet, and a sweater he stole from Chewbacca over his own, and the gloves he kept with him under the covers so they’d absorb some of his body heat.

The base is deathly silent, no one willing to linger in the cold corridors. The heating system is broken again. He can see his breath as he walks.

Leia is hunched over a large paper map in a removed alcove, absently playing with one of the little toy soldiers they use to mark positions. She bumps her shoulder into his when he sidles up next to her.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks.

She smiles as he muffles a yawn behind his gloved hand. “No. Figured I might as well get some work done.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been tracking their movements over this quadrant,” she shows him, “trying to figure out what they might be up to.” Luke’s eyes keep coming back to one corner of the map. “We don’t really have enough conclusive data, but I’ve got a feeling about—”

Their fingers brush as they point to the same small moon over on the side. Leia huffs out a laugh. “Guess I’ll send people to check it out.”

He bumps her shoulder back and yawns again.

Her thumb smoothes over a planet in the Core. He wonders if cartographers will just remove it from the maps now, or if they’ll leave something there to mark the spot. Alderaan was here. Two billion people were here.

“It would be the beginning of spring, there,” she tells him, eyes distant. “We’d have a festival to celebrate the passing of seasons.”

He leans his head on her shoulder, and her hand comes up to scratch at the back of his head, the way Beru used to do when he was very small.

“Tell me about it?” he asks.

There have been many nights like this one—shared insomnia and memories shared over battle plans and mission reports. Sometimes when he closes his eyes he can see Aldera behind his eyelids, its lake, its white buildings. 

They learn each other little by little.

 

 

 

The General has offered Han a place in the rebellion and a rank. Han has yet to accept.

“I don’t get what the problem is,” Luke says, watching Han pack for the trip and judging the way Han folds his clothes. Han goes on missions with them, goes on patrols with them, tries to get out of pointless boring meetings with them. Why dilly-dally if he’s going to do the work anyway?

“Look.” Han sighs deeply—or begins to. He always gets annoyed halfway through a sigh and starts growling instead. Leia does the same thing. It’s pretty funny. “I’m just a smuggler, kid.”

“You’re here with us.”

“Don’t make me out to be such a good guy, I’m not,” Han says gruffly, shoving a shirt into his bag like Luke hasn’t told him a dozen times clothes take up less room when they’re properly put away. “I did the right thing once or twice, it’s not the same thing.”

“I think it is. You’ve just got to keep doing it over and over, that’s what being good is.”

“Oh yeah? Think I can do it?”

“‘Course.”

Han clears his throat, focuses on zipping his bag. He’s having a hard time with it. “Got that much faith in me, huh?”

“I do,” Luke tells him, as earnest as he knows how.

Luke makes him repack his bag properly. Han accepts the General’s offer.

 

 

 

The heating system is broken again. The heating system is always broken.

“I hate this planet. I hate it more than I hate Jakku,” Luke tells the Han-shaped bundle of blankets, who mumbles something back at him. He would protest on principle at Han’s casual appropriation of Luke’s bed, but he can’t risk Han leaving and taking his body heat away with him.

He gets ready for bed—takes off his coat and shoes and _absolutely nothing else_ —and hurries to get under the covers.

The door slides open and Leia barges in, looking indignant. “This is unbearable!” she exclaims. “People are killing each other for hot water out there!” Luke’s pretty sure she means _she_ was about to kill someone over hot water.

“Don’t go shanking anyone, princess,” Han drawls out.

She ignores him and sits on the bed—Luke’s bed, he should probably make sure they’re both aware it’s his bed—to take her shoes off. Then she yanks at the covers until he lets go of them and wriggles onto the bed.

“Stop taking up all the room,” Leia orders him, and kicks at his legs for good measure.

“I’m not,” Luke protests. He’s already squished back against Han. He kicks back at her and they end up wrestling with their legs, trying to pin each other down like children.

They might have grown up like this, Luke thinks vaguely. If they had somehow known each other as children. Beru had spoken fondly of her younger sister, of petty squabbles and secrets exchanged in the night, and Luke had wanted it. He had felt a void within him that only a sibling could fill, he had thought; but now there is Leia, and Han, and Luke longs for nothing more than peace.

They settle down eventually, too cold and too tired for anything but sleep. Han barely grumbles when Luke shoves his cold nose against his neck, and all three of them burrow into each other.

“I don’t really hate this planet more than Jakku,” Luke tells them, already half under.

Leia pats at him comfortingly.  

“Go to sleep, kid.”

“It looks nice, all the snow. And the sky, the sky’s nice.”

“I’ll take you flying tomorrow,” Han promises, voice syrupy with sleep.

His breathing evens out. Leia has started making small snoring noises.

Luke follows.

 

 

 

They go first thing in the morning. Han’s borrowed X-Wing shadows him, sometimes coming close enough to almost brush against his wings only to pull away again at the last minute, like a game, like the Alderaan dance Leia taught him where you never quite touch. Luke wants to learn this dance, too. He wants to race Han and his own shadow. He wants to be young and reckless and do so many loops he’ll get dizzy.

“Well? It’s your show,” Leia says over the comms. The corner of his mind which she somehow inhabits feels warm and pleased.

The engine purrs softly around him.

Luke closes his eyes and opens them again, the sky blue and open and stretching endlessly before him, and Han’s voice in his ear, saying, “Go on, kid, show us what you got.”

 

 

 


End file.
